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BREAKING: Bitmine sets 5% Ether supply ‘hard cap’ as accumulation target nears

Tom Lee's Bitmine, the world's largest Ether treasury, said on Wednesday it'll stop buying once it owns 5% of the supply.

(Bitmine is a listed company that sells its own shares to fund Ether purchases, the way Strategy does with Bitcoin.)

It's about 100,000 Ether short of that line, which is six to seven weeks at last week's pace of $41 million.

Lee told Token2049 in Singapore the target was meant to take five years, and it took a little over one.

Ether fell about 5% to its lowest price in more than two weeks, almost twice Bitcoin's drop on a day an oil spike dragged the whole market lower.

Back in late July, we named three things pulling Ether up, and two of them were Bitmine's weekly buying and the cash flowing into BlackRock's Ether fund.

Investors have been pulling money out of US spot Ether ETFs as well, $202 million on Tuesday and $161 million on Wednesday, mostly from BlackRock's fund, for a seventh straight day of outflows worth about $569 million.

To be fair, Bitmine was never the biggest buyer around in dollar terms, and its $41 million a week is a fifth of what left those ETFs in a single day.

It did turn up every week for 16 months, though, right through the slump.

The buying stops with about $4.5 billion of paper losses on Bitmine's books, and Lee has said it could even sell the Ether it earns from staking to stay at 5%.

(Staking means locking Ether up to help secure the network, in exchange for newly issued Ether.)

Lee's pitch to his own shareholders is that with no more capital to raise, Bitmine's stock can "outperform ETH on the way up."

Bitmine paid for its Ether by selling new shares, so capping the stack spares its shareholders any more dilution.

It also takes away the one Ether order the market could count on every week. 🚀

Clint Brauer returned to his family farm after his father developed Parkinson’s. What began as a personal mission became Greenfield Robotics: robots designed to replace herbicides with mechanical weed control.

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Scott Melker thinks the market's favourite wish right now, a Fed rate cut, is a strange thing to be rooting for.

He's the host of The Wolf of All Streets, a former professional DJ turned full-time market obsessive who has interviewed nearly everyone in the industry.

Here's what he posted:

Traders want cuts because cheaper money means more liquidity sloshing into risk assets like Bitcoin.

But as Melker points out, the Fed only cuts when something's broken, so wanting a cut means hoping for damage somewhere in the economy first.

(He compares it to living in the Upside Down from Stranger Things…)

Shortly after he posted, the Fed published the minutes of its September meeting, and they push a cut even further out.

Most officials think another hike will likely be needed by year-end, after a 12-0 vote lifted rates to 3.75%-4% last month.

Some even flagged the AI building boom as a risk that could run demand ahead of supply and push inflation higher.

Melker's closing line was that the bond market isn't buying anything the Fed or oil says.

On Wednesday the 30-year Treasury yield finished near 5.66%, Brent oil held above $101 and Bitcoin slipped to around $83,000.

For Bitcoin, the cut that shows up in a setup like this is the emergency kind, and that one arrives after the damage.

In March 2020, Bitcoin roughly halved in two days before the Fed slashed rates to zero.

The healthier path is the dull one, where growth holds, yields cool off by themselves and Bitcoin doesn't need anyone to rescue it.

Hope for a boring economy and a bond market that settles down without a crisis. 💥

Today we'll be checking in on the amount of Ethereum available for sale on exchanges.

Here's how to interpret this metric:

14.696 million ETH on exchanges. Down from 14.813 million two weeks ago.

After slowing last time, the drain sped up again.

Roughly 117,000 ETH left exchanges this fortnight, up from the 95,000 that left the print before.

Fewer coins on exchanges means less supply ready to sell, and this outflow trimmed the float by about 0.8% in two weeks.

At today's price that's over $300 million of ether pulled off exchanges.

The balance is now below 14.7 million for the first time, another record low on a chart that keeps setting them. 💧

US Government Moves $103 Million in Seized Bitcoin and BNB, But Hasn't Said Why. Government-labelled wallets sent 833.6 BTC, about $71.6 million, to Coinbase Prime deposit addresses, mostly HashFlare and Bitfinex hack forfeitures, according to Arkham.

Coinbase brings global crypto derivatives liquidity to US with Deribit integration. US institutions can reach Deribit's options and perpetual futures through Coinbase, with options for US retail customers expected later this year.

Robinhood adds $25 million worth of bitcoin to balance sheet as it deepens crypto push. Crypto chief Johann Kerbrat called it a show of commitment that won't change much for a company worth about $100 billion.

Quantum computers threaten exposed private keys rather than blockchains, Europol warns. Europol's cybercrime centre says about 6.9 million bitcoin sit at addresses with exposed public keys and urges phased wallet upgrades now.

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Because what would the crypto world be without its share of memes?

Trivia Answer: Every 2,016 blocks, roughly every two weeks 🥳

Every 2,016 blocks the network resets the difficulty so blocks keep landing about every 10 minutes, however much mining power joins or leaves. That's why a rush of new miners doesn't speed up Bitcoin's issuance.

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